We and Our Neighbors: or, The Records of an Unfashionable Street

CHAPTER XXI
BOLTON AND ST. JOHN

St. John was seated in his study, with a book of meditations before him on which he was endeavoring to fix his mind. In the hot, dusty, vulgar atmosphere of modern life, it was his daily effort to bring around himself the shady coolness, the calm conventual stillness, that breathes through such writers as St. Francis de Sales and Thomas à Kempis, men with a genius for devotion, who have left to mankind records of the mile-stones and road-marks by which they traveled towards the highest things. Nor should the most stringent Protestant fail to honor that rich and grand treasury of the experience of devout spirits of which the Romish Church has been the custodian. The hymns and prayers and pious meditations which come to us through this channel are particularly worthy of a cherishing remembrance in this dusty, materialistic age. To St. John they had a double charm, by reason of their contrast with the sterility of the religious forms of his early life. While enough of the Puritan and Protestant remained in him to prevent his falling at once into the full embrace of Romanism, he still regarded the old fabric with a softened, poetic tenderness; he "took pleasure in her stones and favored the dust thereof."

Nor is it to be denied that in the history of the Romish Church are records of heroism and self-devotion which might justly inspire with ardor the son of a line of Puritans. Who can go beyond St. Francis Xavier in the signs of an apostle? Who labored with more utter self-surrender than Father Claver for the poor negro slaves of South America? And how magnificent are those standing Orders of Charity, composed of men and women of that communion, that have formed from age to age a life-guard of humanity, devoted to healing the sick, sheltering and educating the orphans, comforting the dying!

A course of eager reading in this direction might make it quite credible even that a Puritan on the rebound should wish to come as near such a church as is possible without sacrifice of conscience and reason.

In the modern Anglican wing of the English Church St. John thought he had found the blessed medium. There he believed were the signs of the devotion, the heroism and self-sacrifice of the primitive Catholic Church, without the hindrances and incrustations of superstition. That little record, "Ten Years in St. George's Mission," was to him the seal of their calling. There he read of men of property devoting their entire wealth, their whole time and strength, to the work of regenerating the neglected poor of London. He read of a district that at first could be entered only under the protection of the police, where these moral heroes began their work of love amid the hootings and howlings of the mob and threats of personal violence, – the scoff and scorn of those they came to save; and how by the might of Christian love and patience these savage hearts were subdued, these blasphemies turned to prayers; and how in this dark district arose churches, schools, homes for the destitute, reformatories for the lost. No wonder St. John, reading of such a history, felt, "This is the church for me." Perhaps a wider observation might have shown him that such labors and successes are not peculiar to the ritualist, that to wear the cross outwardly is not essential to bearing the cross inwardly, and that without signs and the symbolism of devout forms, the spirit of love, patience and self-denial can and does accomplish the same results.

St. John had not often met Bolton before that evening at the Henderson's. There, for the first time, he had had a quiet, uninterrupted conversation with him; and, from the first, there had been felt between them that constitutional sympathy that often unites widely varying natures, like the accord of two different strings of an instrument.

Bolton was less of an idealist than St. John, with a wider practical experience and a heavier mental caliber. He was in no danger of sentimentalism, and yet there was about him a deep and powerful undertone of feeling that inclined him in the same direction with Mr. St. John. There are men, and very strong men, whose natures gravitate towards Romanism with a force only partially modified by intellectual convictions: they would be glad to believe it if they could.

Bolton was an instance of a man of high moral and intellectual organization, of sensitive conscience and intense sensibility, who, with the highest ideal of manhood and of the purposes to which life should be devoted, had come to look upon himself as an utter failure. An infirmity of the brain and the flesh had crept upon him in the unguarded period of youth, had struck its poison through his system, and weakened the power of the will, till all the earlier part of his life had been a series of the most mortifying failures. He had fallen from situation after situation, where he had done work for a season: and, each time, the agony of his self-reproach and despair had been doubled by the reproaches and expostulations of many of his own family friends, who poured upon bare nerves the nitric acid of reproach. He had seen the hair of his mother slowly and surely whitening in the sickening anxieties and disappointments which he had brought. Loving her with almost a lover's fondness, desiring above all things to be her staff and stay, he had felt himself to be to her only an anxiety and a disappointment.

When, at last, he had gained a foothold and a place in the press, he was still haunted with the fear of recurring failure. He who has two or three times felt his sanity give way, and himself become incapable of rational control, never thereafter holds himself secure. And so it was with this overpowering impulse to which Bolton had been subjected; he did not know at what time it might sweep over him again.

Of late, his intimacy had been sought by Eva, and he had yielded to the charm of her society. It was impossible for a nature at once so sympathetic and so transparent as hers to mingle intimately with another without learning and betraying much. The woman's tact at once divined that his love for Caroline had only grown with time, and the scarce suppressed eagerness with which he listened to any tidings from her led on from step to step in mutual confidence, till there was nothing more to be told, and Bolton felt that the only woman he had ever loved, loved him in return with a tenacity and intensity which would be controlling forces in her life.

It was with a bitter pleasure nearly akin to pain that this conviction entered his soul. To a delicate moral organization, the increase of responsibility, with distrust of ability to meet it, is a species of torture. He feared himself destined once more to wreck the life and ruin the hopes of one dearer than his own soul, who was devoting herself to him with a woman's uncalculating fidelity.

This agony of self-distrust, this conscious weakness in his most earnest resolutions and most fervent struggles, led Bolton to wish with all his heart that the beautiful illusion of an all-powerful church in which still resided the visible presence of Almighty God might be a reality. His whole soul sometimes cried out for such a visible Helper – for a church with power to bind and loose, with sacraments which should supplement human weakness by supernatural grace, with a priesthood competent to forgive sin and to guide the penitent. It was simply and only because his clear, well-trained intelligence could see no evidence of what he longed to believe, that the absolute faith was wanting.

He was not the only one in this perplexed and hopeless struggle with life and self and the world who has cried out for a visible temple, such as had the ancient Jew; for a visible High-Priest, who should consult the oracle for him and bring him back some sure message from a living God.

When he looked back on the seasons of his failures, he remembered that it was with vows and tears and prayers of agony in his mouth that he had been swept away by the burning temptation; that he had been wrenched, cold and despairing, from the very horns of the altar. Sometimes he looked with envy at those refuges which the Romish Church provides for those who are too weak to fight the battle of life alone, and thought, with a sense of rest and relief, of entering some of those religious retreats where a man surrenders his whole being to the direction of another, and ends the strife by laying down personal free agency at the feet of absolute authority. Nothing but an unconvinced intellect – an inability to believe – stood in the way of this entire self-surrender. This morning, he had sought Mr. St. John's study, to direct his attention to the case of the young woman whom he had rescued from the streets, the night before.

Bolton's own personal experience of human weakness and the tyranny of passion had made him intensely pitiful. He looked on the vicious and the abandoned as a man shipwrecked and swimming for his life looks on the drowning who are floating in the waves around him; and where a hand was wanting, he was prompt to stretch it out.

There was something in that young, haggard face, those sad, appealing eyes, that had interested him more powerfully than usual, and he related the case with much feeling to Mr. St. John, who readily promised to call and ascertain if possible some further particulars about her.

"You did the very best possible thing for her," said he, "when you put her into the care of the Church. The Church alone is competent to deal with such cases."

Bolton ruminated within himself on the wild, diseased impulses, the morbid cravings and disorders, the complete wreck of body and soul that comes of such a life as the woman had led, and then admired the serene repose with which St. John pronounced that indefinite power, the church, as competent to cast out the seven devils of the Magdalen.

"I shall be very glad to hear good news of her," he said; "and if the Church is strong enough to save such as she, I shall be glad to know that too."

"You speak in a skeptical tone," said St. John.

"Pardon me: I know something of the difficulties, physical and moral, which lie in the way," said Bolton.

"To them that believe, nothing shall be impossible," said St. John, his face kindling with ardor.

"And by the Church do you mean all persons who have the spirit of Jesus Christ, or simply that portion of them who worship in the form that you do?"

"Come, now," said St. John, "the very form of your question invites to a long historic argument; and I am sure you did not mean to draw that on your head."

"Some other time, though," said Bolton, "if you will undertake to convince me of the existence in this world of such a power as you believe in, you will find me certainly not unwilling to believe. But, this morning, I have but a brief time to spend. Farewell, for the present."

And with a hearty hand-shake the two parted.

CHAPTER XXII
BOLTON TO CAROLINE

I had not thought to obtrude myself needlessly on you ever again. Oppressed with the remembrance that I have been a blight on a life that might otherwise have been happy, I thought my only expiation was silence. But it had not then occurred to me that possibly you could feel and be pained by that silence. But of late I have been very intimate with Mrs. Henderson, whose mind is like those crystalline lakes we read of – a pebble upon the bottom is evident. She loves you so warmly and feels for you so sympathetically that, almost unconsciously, when you pour your feelings into her heart, they are revealed to me through the transparent medium of her nature. I confess that I am still so selfish as to feel a pleasure in the thought that you cannot forget me. I cannot forget you. I never have forgotten you, I believe, for a waking conscious hour since that time when your father shut the door of his house between you and me. I have demonstrated in my own experience that there may be a double consciousness all the while going on, in which the presence of one person should seem to pervade every scene of life. You have been with me, even in those mad fatal seasons when I have been swept from reason and conscience and hope – it has added bitterness to my humiliation in my weak hours; but it has been motive and courage to rise up again and again and renew the fight – the fight that must last as long as life lasts; for, Caroline, this is so. In some constitutions, with some hereditary predispositions, the indiscretions and ignorances of youth leave a fatal irremediable injury. Though the sin be in the first place one of inexperience and ignorance, it is one that nature never forgives. The evil once done can never be undone; no prayers, no entreaties, no resolutions, can change the consequences of violated law. The brain and nerve force, once vitiated by poisonous stimulants, become thereafter subtle tempters and traitors, forever lying in wait to deceive and urging to ruin; and he who is saved, is saved so as by fire. Since it is your unhappy fate to care so much for me, I owe to you the utmost frankness. I must tell you plainly that I am an unsafe man. I am like a ship with powder on board and a smouldering fire in the hold. I must warn my friends off, lest at any moment I carry ruin to them, and they be drawn down in my vortex. We can be friends, dear friends; but let me beg you, think as little of me as you can. Be a friend in a certain degree, after the manner of the world, rationally, and with a wise regard to your own best interests – you who are worth five hundred times what I am – you who have beauty, talent, energy – who have a career opening before you, and a most noble and true friend in Miss Ida; do not let your sympathies for a very worthless individual lead you to defraud yourself of all that you should gain in the opportunities now open to you. Command my services for you in the literary line when ever they may be of the slightest use. Remember that nothing in the world makes me so happy as an opportunity to serve you. Treat me as you would a loyal serf, whose only thought is to live and die for you; as the princess of the middle ages treated the knight of low degree, who devoted himself to her service. There is nothing you could ask me to do for you that would not be to me a pleasure; and all the more so, if it involved any labor or difficulty. In return, be assured, that merely by being the woman you are, merely by the love which you have given and still give to one so unworthy, you are a constant strength to me, an encouragement never to faint in a struggle which must last as long as this life lasts. For although we must not forget that life, in the best sense of the word, lasts forever, yet this first mortal phase of it is, thank God, but short. There is another and a higher life for those whose life has been a failure here. Those who die fighting – even though they fall, many times trodden under the hoof of the enemy – will find themselves there made more than conquerors through One who hath loved them.

In this age, when so many are giving up religion, hearts like yours and mine, Caroline, that know the real strain and anguish of this present life, are the ones to appreciate the absolute necessity of faith in the great hereafter. Without this, how cruel is life! How bitter, how even unjust, the weakness and inexperience with which human beings are pushed forth amid the grinding and clashing of natural laws – laws of whose operation they are ignorant and yet whose penalties are inexorable! If there be not a Guiding Father, a redeeming future, how dark is the prospect of this life! and who can wonder that the ancients, many of the best of them, considered suicide as one of the reserved rights of human nature? Without religious faith, I certainly should. I am making this letter too long; the pleasure of speaking to you tempts me still to prolong it, but I forbear.

Ever yours, devotedly,

Bolton

CAROLINE TO BOLTON

My Dear Friend: How can I thank you for the confidence you have shown me in your letter? You were not mistaken in thinking that this long silence has been cruel to me. It is more cruel to a woman than it can possibly be to a man, because if to him silence be a pain, he yet is conscious all the time that he has the power to break it; he has the right to speak at any time, but a woman must die silent. Every fiber of her being says this. She cannot speak, she must suffer as the dumb animals suffer.

I have, I confess, at times, been bitterly impatient of this long reserve, knowing, as I did, that you had not ceased to feel what you once felt. I saw, in our brief interviews in New York, that you loved me still. A woman is never blind to that fact, with whatever care it is sought to be hidden. I saw that you felt all you once professed, and yet were determined to conceal it, and treat with me on the calm basis of ordinary friendship, and sometimes I was indignant: forgive me the injustice.

You see that such a course is of no use, as a means of making one forget. To know one's self passionately beloved by another who never avows it, is something dangerous to the imagination. It gives rise to a thousand restless conjectures, and is fatal to peace. We can reconcile ourselves in time to any certainty; it is only when we are called upon to accommodate ourselves to possibilities, uncertain as vaporous clouds, that we weary ourselves in fruitless efforts.

Your letter avows what I knew before; what you often told me in our happy days: and I now say in return that I, like you, have never forgotten; that your image and presence have been to me as mine to you, ever a part of my consciousness through all these years of separation. And now you ask me to change all this into a cool and prudent friendship, after the manner of the world; that is to say, to take all from you, to accept the entire devotion of your heart and life, but be careful to risk nothing in return, to keep at a safe distance from your possible troubles, lest I be involved.

Do you think me capable of this? Is it like me? and what would you think and say to a friend who should make the same proposition to you? Put it to yourself: what would you think of yourself, if you could be so coldly wary and prudent with regard to a friend who was giving to you the whole devotion of heart and life?

No, dear friend, this is all idle talk. Away with it! I feel that I am capable of as entire devotion to you as I know you are to me; never doubt it. The sad fatality which clouds your life makes this feeling only the more intense; as we feel for those who are a part of our own hearts, when in suffering and danger. In one respect, my medical studies are an advantage to me. They have placed me at a stand-point where my judgment on these questions and subjects is different from those of ordinary women. An understanding of the laws of physical being, of the conditions of brain and nerve forces, may possibly at some future day bring a remedy for such sufferings as yours. I look for this among the possible triumphs of science, – it adds interest to the studies and lectures I am pursuing. I shall not be to you what many women are to the men whom they love, an added weight to fall upon you if you fall, to crush you under the burden of my disappointments and anxieties and distresses. Knowing that your heart is resolute and your nature noble, a failure, supposing such a possibility, would be to me only like a fever or a paralysis, – a subject for new care and watchfulness and devotion, not one for tears or reproaches or exhortations.

There are lesions of the will that are no more to be considered subject to moral condemnation than a strain of the spinal column or a sudden fall, from paralysis. It is a misfortune; and to real true affection, a misfortune only renders the sufferer more dear and redoubles devotion.

Your letter gives me courage to live – courage to pursue the course set before me here. I will make the most of myself that I can for your sake, since all I am or can be is yours. Already I hope that I am of use to you in opening the doors of confidence. Believe me, dear, nothing is so bad for the health of the mind or the body as to have a constant source of anxiety and apprehension that cannot be spoken of to anybody. The mind thus shut within itself becomes a cave of morbid horrors. I believe these unshared fears, these broodings, and dreads unspoken, often fulfill their own prediction by the unhealthy states of mind that they bring.

The chambers of the soul ought to be daily opened and aired; the sunshine of a friend's presence ought to shine through them, to dispel sickly damps and the malaria of fears and horrors. If I could be with you and see you daily, my presence should cheer you, my faith in you should strengthen your faith in yourself.

For my part, I can see how the very sensitiveness of your moral temperament which makes you so dread a failure, exposes you to fail. I think the near friends of persons who have your danger often hinder instead of helping them by the manifestation of their fears and anxieties. They think there is no way but to "pile up the agony," to intensify the sense of danger and responsibility, when the fact is, the subject of it is feeling now all the strain that human nerves can feel without cracking.

We all know that we can walk with a cool head across a narrow plank only one foot from the ground. But put the plank across a chasm a thousand feet in depth, and the head swims. We have the same capacity in both cases; but, in the latter, the awfulness of the risk induces a nervous anxiety that amounts to a paralysis of the will.

Don't, therefore, let this dread grow on you by the horror of lonely brooding. Treat it as you would the liability to any other disease, openly, rationally and hopefully; and keep yourself in the daily light and warmth of sympathetic intercourse with friends who understand you and can help you. There are Eva and Harry – noble, true friends, indebted to you for many favors, and devoted to you with a loyal faithfulness. Let their faith and mine in you strengthen your belief in yourself. And don't, above all things, take any load of responsibility about my happiness, and talk about being the blight and shadow on my life. I trust I am learning that we were sent into this world, not to clamor for happiness, but to do our part in a life-work. What matter is it whether I am happy or not, if I do my part? I know all the risks and all the dangers that come from being identified, heart and soul, with the life of another as I am with yours. I know the risks, and am ready to face them. I am ready to live for you and die for you, and count it all joy to the last.

I was much touched by what you said of those who have died defeated yet fighting. Yes, it is my belief that many a poor soul who has again and again failed in the conflict has yet put forth more effort, practiced more self-denial, than hundreds of average Christians; and He who knows what the trial is, will judge them tenderly – that is to say, justly.

But for you there must be a future, even in this life. I am assured of it, and you must believe it: you must believe with my faith, and hope in my hope. Come what will, I am, heart and soul and forever,

Yours,

Caroline.